The Democrats and Obama did a great thing in passing the ACA in 2010. And they’ve done a hideous job defending it and themselves since then.
The loss of the House in 2010 by the Dems/Obama is possibly the single greatest act of political malpractice that I’ve ever seen — down there with Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, Charlie Baker’s 2010 run and Scott Brown’s 2012 run. How the Dems continue to allow their opponents to vote to take away people’s health care — and win — is absolutely beyond me. You have to make people own their positions, and the consequences that arise from them.
For all the genuinely difficult choices that passing the ACA required, the Democrats have played defense on all of them, while not making the GOP defend the indefensible — leaving people without a way to see a doctor when they’re sick.
Here’s Eugene Robinson:
Democrats should talk about what’s right with the ACA. They should talk about the millions of formerly uninsured Americans who now have coverage. They should talk about the millions of others who now are covered under Medicaid. They should talk about the young people who are able to be covered under their parents’ policies. They should talk about the diabetics and cancer survivors who now cannot be denied coverage because of their conditions.
The Democratic Party has long taken the position that no one should have to declare bankruptcy because of illness, that no one should have to choose between paying for medicine and paying the mortgage. If Democrats can’t proclaim these beliefs with pride, why on earth are they running?
via Eugene Robinson: Democrats should play offense on Obamacare in the midterms – The Washington Post.
There should be endless campaign commercials showing people who got health care because of the ACA, or whose premiums went down, or who could quit their jobs and start their own companies — starting three years ago.
Why are we so stupid?
dave-from-hvad says
when they noted that Obama is very good at promoting himself, but poor at promoting his policies and programs. The rest of the Democratic Party appears to be too scared or intimidated to do either one of those things. They seem prepared to go quietly down to defeat in the mid-term elections.
jconway says
He foolishly views himself as “above the fray” of partisan politics and has positioned his White House as a centrist alternative to Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner when in reality it is portrayed as far more liberal than any White House in history by all the major MSM outlets in spite of that being objectively untrue. And then he limply thinks he’s still cool enough for Millennials to go on two ferns (NOT a great move Bob!) and then insists he’s more conservative than Nixon (objectively true but what message does that send to all of us fighting in the grassroots?).
And it’s the unsexy midterms. We got to defend DINOs like Pruor and Landreiu who are running away from Obamacare, and our best offensive prospects are the milquetoast Nunn , Grimes, and Tennant. At least Hagan is willing to go down with the ship, but at a double digit deficit what does she have to lose? It’s leading from behind on domestic politics, letting your opponents define you and then insist you’re not what they say you are.
For 40 years we have been painted as liberal and running away from that label and we are at a crucial moment when a supermajority of under 30 voters in every state-the very kids who froze their asses off in the cornfields of Iowa and got clean for Barry (this kid being one of them!)-self identify as liberal we run away from that label. It’s like my fellow SFBO alum said to me last time he was in town and we got a beer, “I thought that bipartisan and post partisan stuff sounded good to win the election-had I known he believed it I’d have voted for Hillary”.
He has to barnstorm the country attacking Republicans for the limp recovery and blaming them for the poor implementation of ACA while fixing it. And offer a strong public option as a remedy. Sure it’s a throw away sop to the base that has no chance in hell of passing but it gives us something to vote for and something to aspire to. And if their base gets promised abortion bans and the entire repeal of Obamacare and impeachment why can’t we get stroked just a little? Its hard to feel like he doesn’t hold his strongest supporters in open contempt. I feel like he’d rather placate Jerry Imelt or Larry Summers than me.
fenway49 says
on Friday night:
Ditto the Reagan love. I thought he meant he wanted to do for Democrats/liberals what Reagan had done for Republicans/conservatives. Namely, change the conversation for a few decades. As time went on I realized more and more he actually was OK with Reagan on policy.
jconway says
Chained CPI was a policy goal of this administration not a negotiating tactic. He really thinks and acts like a fiscal conservative first. I partly blame
big money and the Clinton apparatus at the elite of the party. He won the primaries powered by small donors and better grassroots organizing ( won every caucus for instance), and when he got Hillary to drop the super delegates must’ve met with him in a room somewhere and forced him
to play the Clinton play book,opt out of public financing (let’s be honest folks McCain had more integrity on that issue and shot himself in the foot and that had a more immediately devastating effect than Citizens), and gave him a list of people he had to have around him to get Wall Street money. Sound like a conspiracy theory? The candidate himself expressed great frustration with starting to sense a change in himself where he adopts the ideas and concerns of his donors rather than the people at large.
Hard to argue with Naomi Klein
farnkoff says
Has she published a book since “Shock Doctrine”? I’ve been dying for her to weigh in on Obama, the bailouts, the current GOP, and so forth.
jconway says
I used to bash her and Krugman before back when I was more centrist/blindly loyal to Obama. But they were right and Obama and I were wrong.
I hope she does continue to weigh in, I know she loves coming by U Chicago to argue with the various econ undergrads who are enamored with the cult of Friedmen and neoliberalism, and she usually gets the best of them.
JimC says
Which I sympathize with. And yes, Obama would rather please Larry Summers than us. Because part of him is a Baby Boomer yuppie.
But I would just add, it’s not terribly unreasonable for the popular, twice-elected by large margins President to expect BOTH major parties to cooperate in the implementation of his signature legislation, which they had an opportunity to vote on. The problems of Obamacare rest largely with the White House, but Congress (and just about every Republican legislature) has done its best to mess it up. Not quite treason, but civil disobedience, and ill-intentioned civil disobedience.
marthews says
I respect the legislative achievement involved in getting the ACA passed. But a big part of the problem has been that, in order to get the ten-year price tag under a notional $1 trillion (more than offset, of course, by new revenue), actual implementation was delayed till 2014. That gave Republicans at least three clear years to scare people about an unknown future, without being able to publicize concrete stories of people who were actually being helped by it. I don’t think it was good policy or good politics to delay it so long, and the President is still making the same mistake, delaying and delaying the full implementation of the ACA’s mandates in the hope that somehow an extra year will make people happier.
It won’t. It will make people less happy. (A) It makes people think that the employer mandate is severable from the rest of the ACA. (B) It gives business people more time to fear what will happen to their profits once the mandate is properly enforced, and to organize against it. (C) It gets us closer and closer to the 2016 election, and while it’s likely a Democrat will be elected in 2016, it’s less certain than whether we have a Democratic president in 2014.
fenway49 says
I’m tempted to say it’s about as certain. 70% chance either way.
jconway says
If people are still as angry as they are now about the direction of the country we could drop it to a loser like Rand Paul-someone the media is starting to fetishize as a maverick the same way they did with McCain. Even Bill Maher likes him for some strange reason.
Its more likely that we have another lesser of two evils election where progressives are expected to swallow their pride and convictions and hold their nose less “those nut jobs” get elected. Barring a strong progressive primary challenge (and as much as I love Sanders he ain’t it) she can run a general election campaign for two years while the circular firing squad on the right immolates itself.
And what worries me there is that people will get tired of her
and gravitate to the shiny new object that emerges from the pure on the right.
kbusch says
This is wrong:
They should give anecdotes. Plenty of them. Talking about “millions” is pretty unconvincing politically.
Trickle up says
I find Charlie’s question–“so why aren’t they doing it”–more interesting and troublesome.
My party could kill on health care alone. Keep the Senate and, I really believe, take the House back, gerrymanders notwithstanding.
Why does a center-left country have a center-right government?
JimC says
On what scale are we center-left, though? European countries have actual socialist parties. In Germany the Greens are a real force.
We might be center-right. I don’t know the answer. But we have an inadequate, overly narrow government, on that I agree.
fenway49 says
that has Bernie Sanders at the left and Ted Cruz at the right that defines U.S. politics. Even by this standard, which is to the right of a European scale, the GOP argued for years we were a “center-right nation.” On the issues, though, it’s clear that today we’re a “center-left nation.” Election results and, even more so, governance are definitely lagging indicators here.
Bob Neer says
It’s a Republic. As just one example, in the last election for the most democratic element of the federal government, the House, Democrats got 59,649,982 votes, Republicans 58,284,825, and others 3,413,116. But despite losing the vote, Republicans have their second-largest majority since WWII. That’s explanation enough.
fenway49 says
On top of the gerrymandering, nearly half the two-party voters are voting Republican but nowhere near half the voters support the Republican position on many issues. We’re looking at turnout issues and no small number of people who disagree with the Republicans on issues but vote for them anyway.
Then you have the Democrats who don’t govern the way they campaigned (like the one in the White House). Republicans generally can be counted on to govern as far right as, or more to the right than, they campaigned. Add it all up and you have a government well to the right of the populace. You see it on things like background checks, minimum wage, UI, food stamps, or Social Security.
jconway says
Is it just because they are older and whiter and more reliable in midterms or because they actually give a damn about getting their base out with policies that actually appeal to the base? Having re-read portions of Audacity of Hope I am now convinced he really did think simply being the non-extreme candidate was enough to win and to govern. I honestly don’t think the Dems can stall a Nader style action from the left in the next ten years if their slogan is simply ‘not as crazy as the GOP’.
They gotta offer up something more than Pryor, Nunn, Grimes 2014!
I am really excited at the state level and have sort of given up hope federally, we can get social democracy style economics enacted in New England by 2030 if we work hard enough for it, and that seems to generate more impact than falsely hoping Hillary will owe the left something or congressional dems will learn to be competent.
JimC says
Republicans by and large do not govern to the right. A coworker of observed that, when the GOP had the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, they STILL passed no federal abortion bans.
They have also, despite all their rhetoric, increased government spending at a pretty steady pace since Ronald Reagan.
This is good news, really. They disappoint their base as much as our leaders disappoint us.
fenway49 says
Most of them don’t ever, I think, intend to do much about that at the federal level. At the state level, don’t kid yourself. They’ve passed enough restrictions that Roe v. Wade is a sad joke in about 35 states.
The post-Reagan right also has no interest in cutting government spending. Cheney said himself, “Deficits don’t matter.” Until a Democrat is in the White House. Then it’s cut, cut, cut. Medicare Part D is a perfect example: they spent a boatload more than necessary rather than cut into the massive profits they were handing the pharma industry by letting the program use its negotiating power to bring prices down.
They are emphatically not the party of fiscal responsibility. They haven’t been for 35 years and it’s criminal anyone would still think they are. The point, under Reagan and Bush II, was not to manage government funds well or “shrink government.” The point was to shrink the part of government that helps people in the bottom half or 2/3, while growing the part that helps large corporations and the wealthiest individuals.
So, yeah, they disappoint their electoral base quite a bit. They’ve done great by their real base.
JimC says
… the state bans are preludes to national bans. But i take your point. Our state reps have generally done better by us than our national reps have as well.
kbusch says
Even a recent poll has shown this. About twice as many Americans define themselves as conservative as liberal. Thinking of oneself as conservative has a nice ring to it as if it were a sign of being morally upstanding. On the other hand, when polled on issues, Americans are remarkably liberal.
The challenge for Democrats and for liberals has been to get people to vote their views and not their identity. That’s perhaps a reason why Republicans try to run on image (think G.W.Bush and Scott Brown’s truck) and Democrats try to run on issues (think Gore and Dukakis).
This gives Republicans an enormous advantage with low information voters who all believe that they are excellent judges of character but who would be challenged if asked to find Ukraine on a map. Successful Democratic politicians also appeal on the basis of identity and character as well as on the basis of platform.
SomervilleTom says
We have the best government that money can buy, and the left/right distinction is a distraction that keeps the masses (like you and me) busy while the wealthy who own the government and the country continue to amass even more wealth.
merrimackguy says
With maybe $100 million in the bank.
Hanging with other 0.1%’ers, golfing at exclusive courses, private jets, the works.
bluewatch says
Here is an unofficial answer to that question from a member of Obama’s campaign team: We are currently entirely focused on getting people enrolled. After March 31, we will shift our focus to describing the benefits of Obamacare.
joeltpatterson says
I got some good belly laughs out of President Obama on Between Two Ferns… but you know, they could also use the benefits as a reason to sign up.
williamstowndem says
Thanks for making this point. We Dems have no coherent message on healthcare, Russia … or anything else for that matter. Time after time we have to prove that Dems who stand up for Democratic values win elections, and Dems who go ‘Republican Lite’ lose. The DNC seems to be no help whatsoever in this regard, and the White House, well, as much as I like Obama personally, he seems to disdain the notion that he actually must sell his programs and policies, let alone do any party-building around the nation. Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy worked, but he was shown the door, and now we are in a real pickle, one that could last a very long time. And the tragedy is … it was so avoidable.
margiebh says
I don’t know the facts around the roll-out of Social Security, but I bet FDR’s team did a better job back then than Obama’s today.